Man arrested in death of girlfriend's infant

Tim CraigTHE BALTIMORE SUN

A 21-year-old Southwest Baltimore man was arrested yesterday in connection with the beating death of his girlfriend's 7-month-old daughter Tuesday.

Charles Donnell Johnson of the 800 block of Carroll St. was arrested on a murder warrant yesterday afternoon after he tried to elude U.S. marshals by jumping off a roof in the 1200 block of W. Lombard St., police said.

Officers from the U.S. Marshal's fugitive task force were trying serve Johnson with a warrant charging him in the death of the infant, Destiny Way of the 1200 block of Glyndon Ave.

Johnson tried to elude police by climbing onto a roof and jumping off the other side, Sgt. Scott Rowe, a police spokesman, said.

Johnson was arrested after jumping off the building and taken to University Hospital with possible leg fractures, Rowe said.

Rowe said Johnson will be formally charged with first-degree murder and child abuse that resulted in death when he is released from the hospital. Destiny was pronounced dead about 1:30 p.m. Tuesday at University Hospital, where she was taken after a neighbor called 911. Rowe said police were told Destiny had fallen down the stairs, but on Wednesday the state medical examiner's office in Baltimore ruled her death a homicide by blunt-force trauma.

"The baby suffered some trauma," Rowe said, declining to be more specific.

A neighbor in the 1200 block of Glyndon Ave., William Kramer, said a man ran out of Destiny's home Tuesday shouting that he needed someone to call 911.

The man, who Kramer said was apparently baby-sitting Destiny and three other children while her mother was at work, said the family did not have a phone.

"He was screaming, 'Call an ambulance, call an ambulance,'" Kramer said. "He said the baby fell out of the crib, got a bobby pin caught in her throat and then fell down the steps."